“So there’s ULURP,” begins the second song in a new musical about Brooklyn. “ULURP is the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure/Which required community involvement and public review/Of all kinds of New York City land-use projects.”

If this seems like something you might read in the notes of a community board meeting, that’s because it is. The song goes on to define the Empire State Development Corporation and the New York State Urban Development Corporation (E.S.D.C. and U.D.C., for musicality) and describe how they function together. “And that’s how eminent domain works!” it concludes. Jaunty, no?

As far as I know, this is the first attempt to set a land use code to music, but I'd love to hear if anyone knows of another example!

For Steve Cosson, a founder of the inquisitive musical theater troupe the Civilians, dramatizing this wonky subject led to a fertile multiyear examination of politics, race, democracy, money and community, centered on the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. Titled “In the Footprint,” the show mines the New Yorkiest of obsessions — real estate — to present a layered portrait of a city and a neighborhood changing, sometimes under duress. “Atlantic Yards: The Musical!” it’s not.

The songs in “In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards” (the creators call them blogosongs) serve not as emotional showstoppers but as commentary and explanation — the Greek chorus of the digital age. The show, which begins previews at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, on Friday, and opens on Nov. 22, is based on interviews with business owners, neighbors, politicians, bloggers and activists touched by Atlantic Yards, the developer Bruce Ratner’s divisive project to reconfigure 22 acres of urban landscape in Brooklyn, displacing scores of residents and small businesses in the process.

There are so few examples of artistic effort based on land use law. If you're in New York during the run, take it in and send us a review!

Sherrod's speech was deeply personal. She described the unpunished murder of her father by a white farmer in the 1960s, and how that event made her devote her life to changing things in the South. Her feelings about her father's murder, and the extensive discrimination suffered by black farmers in Southeast Georgia, at first lead her to hesitate in helping a white farmer (when she was running a non-profit agency, before her time at USDA). In telling the story of how she overcame that hesitation to help the white farmer, she became open to the accusations of racism that lead to her ouster, even though she was trying to make the point that, for her, rural development is not about race but about poverty.

Sherrod says she shared that story about the farmer back in July to show others that if she could overcome her own personal demons, then so could others. The story was meant to be used as an example and encouragement for others to come together.

"We can't just work in isolated groups, (all races) need to work together to make the changes in the world that we need to make," Sherrod said.

"It's not about black people by themselves and it's not about white people by themselves. Let's all come together as a community."

I came away with the impression that she plans to write a book about her life, and she vowed at the end of her speech to continue to speak out about racism. It will be remarkable to see where she goes next, in her already remarkable life.

In this chapter, I argue that New Orleans’ history of geographic segregation mandates that the burden of restoring the city be shared by all United States citizens. One useful method for implementing this nationwide burden sharing would be to levy a uniform one to two percent tax based on individuals’ income. This uniform tax would be minimal and would be consistent with other taxes raised for the public good, such as the security taxes levied on air travel post September 11, 2001. The funds accumulated from levying the taxes can be used to address some of the financial needs of individuals in disaster stricken areas. This proposal is consistent with the theory of burden-sharing based on ability to pay, which is sometimes used to allocate proportional responsibility among diverse and differently situated individuals. In the international realm, this principle has sometimes been applied in the face of a need “for nations to share in joint and sometimes costly projects for the common good.” (See Daniel A. Farber, Disaster Law and Inequality, 25 Law & Ineq. 297, 320 (2007) (stating: “Social disadvantage can kill in very obvious ways during a disaster” and noting President Bush’s statement that “the poverty of so many in the region ‘has roots in a history of racial discrimination’”).

Consistent with this practice, the burden-sharing based on ability to pay “rests on equal sacrifice notions and implies either proportional or progressive tax schedules.” (Id. at 313–314 n.14). Comprehensive disaster insurance is one of the solutions that have been advanced to alleviate financial needs in times of disaster. This solution, however, because it shifts the burden of remedying the financial woes caused by disaster onto the disaster stricken individuals, does not fully achieve equity. In shifting the burden of providing remedies to the would-be-harmed individuals, the comprehensive disaster insurance proposal does not account for the role that residential and occupational segregation have had on individuals’ choice of geographic residence. This burden should be shared as a way of holding the other cities and states accountable for their silent ratification of these types of geographic segregation. Furthermore, this model of burden-sharing should not be limited to the restoration of New Orleans. It should be implemented in all instances where we can demonstrate that certain groups have historically been pushed out of geographically safe and desirable regions of the United States, being forced to live in precarious and dangerous areas. This chapter is divided into three parts. In the first, I investigate the ways in which cities have been geographically segregated and continue to be so today through various land-use related municipal decisions. In the second, I consider how geographical segregation has caused disproportionate harm in New Orleans. In the third, I argue that remedying New Orleans’ geographical segregation should be one of the primordial goals of the rebuilding efforts and I enunciate a standard that can be used to determine whether rectifying geographical segregation should play a role in disaster prevention as well as in post-disaster rebuilding plans.

There's also an interesting interview with Mark Dowie, author of Conservation Refugees, a book about how land conservation and the creation of wilderness areas has been very much at the expense of indigenous peoples - and how some conservationists and indigenous organizations are working hard to change that.

I am reading Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, recently published by the University of Georgia Press. (Professor Trethewey is on the creative writing faculty at Emory University.) The book is a meditation on identity, place, race, and the impact of family. It is also about the environmental damage wrought by industry and the tourist trade prior to Katrina. I knew nothing about Trethewey or her writing before I heard her on WHYY's Fresh Air last week, but I was so captivated by her story that I went straight out and bought her book. At 125 pages, it's a quick but compelling read.

This article examines the history of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and makes proposals for improving it to help prevent another economic crisis. Passed in 1975, HMDA requires most lenders to disclose information about their home mortgage loans, including the number of home mortgage applications it received; the purpose of each application; the type of loan; the decision on the application; the race, gender, and income of the loan applicant/borrower; the location of the loan and the median income and racial composition of the neighborhood; and the interest rate on the loan. HMDA was originally conceived of as a tool to detect and prevent redlining. It was later expanded to cover lending discrimination and reverse redlining. However, Congress and the Federal Reserve have not required lenders to disclose enough information to permit HMDA to do its job. The pending financial reform legislation would expand HMDA's mission to detect and prevent predatory lending, but once again, the legislation does not require lenders to disclose sufficient information to accomplish its goal. The article proposes several types of information that should be added to the legislation, including, most importantly, the applicant's housing debt/income ratio and overall debt/income ratio.

Recently, many federal courts have been interpreting civil rights laws to allow racially discriminatory treatment of customers in retail stores and racial and religious harassment of tenants and home owners by their neighbors. These courts are misinterpreting federal law and ignoring the will of Congress embodied in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 which clarified that market participants have the right to enjoy property and contract rights on equal terms. More important, these courts are wrongly assuming a background norm of negative liberty; they presume that we are free to engage in racial discrimination in market transactions unless statutes clearly and unambiguously limit our freedom. But this is a mistake.

Since the 1960s, the background norm has become a presumption that market participants are not allowed to treat people unequally because of race, religion, sex, or disability. Both federal and state statutes embody this norm and many statutes contain it explicitly. Even the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was amended in 1991 to provide that private persons are entitled to equal contract terms. We aspire to be a free and democratic society that treats each person with equal concern and respect. We now understand that this commitment not only entails the repudiation of feudalism and slavery but the abolition of apartheid, whether imposed by law or enacted by private persons exercising their property rights. Liberty does not mean the absence of restraint on action; it means the creation of a legal infrastructure of a free and democratic society.

Equal access to the marketplace without regard to race is now as fundamental a norm as is the abolition of feudal tenures. For this reason, the common law should be interpreted to include a background assumption that prohibits racial discrimination in housing or public accommodations. Unless statutes affirmatively grant stores the right to treat their customers differently on account of race, courts should presume that they have no such right. Unless statutes affirmatively grant individuals the right to harass their neighbors on account of race or religion, courts should presume that housing rights include the right to be free from such discriminatory harassment. Rand Paul was wrong to suggest that liberty demands freedom to reject customers because of their race; the very opposite is true. American property law now contains a fundamental anti-apartheid principle that ensures access to the marketplace without regard to racial discrimination and the federal courts should start acting on that foundational commitment.

I am really glad to be joining Land Use Prof Blog as a guest blogger. Over the next few weeks, I look forward to contributing to an already lively discussion. My scholarship and practice interests have recently focused on land trusts, land banks and any other form of direct community control of land resources. If you wish to contact me with an idea or item, email me at JKelly[at]ubalt[dot]edu.

Pietila brings out the characters and stories that illustrate the high-minded racism of the eugenics era and the market-justified redlining of the FHA-predecessor, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. The book kicks into high gear with its exploration of the moral ambiguity of “blockbusting” (civil rights advocacy? cynically manipulative profiteering? both?) in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1948 decision in Shelley v. Kraemer. Amidst these essential narratives are a few hidden gems such as the stories behind the siting of Morgan College (now Morgan State University) and the Social Security Administration and the roles these institutions played in anchoring Baltimore's largest African-American middle-class enclaves.Those considering the book for supplemental reading in land use and property courses might want to check out this 4/27 NPR local radio interview with the author.

The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to publish discriminatory housing advertisements. This has long been applied to newspapers, which have effectively screened all discriminatory housing ads from sight. However, in 1996 Congress created a loophole when it immunized website operators from liability for the content posted to their sites by third parties. Without publisher liability, websites have no incentive to screen out discriminatory housing ads. The result is that such ads are proliferating in cyberspace. While this situation is problematic from a fair housing standpoint, it presents a valuable opportunity. For the first time in a generation discriminatory housing advertisements are out in the open and available for analysis. This article contains a comprehensive review of discriminatory housing ads appearing on the popular website craigslist, which yields a number of interesting findings, including: (1) The vast majority of those who post discriminatory on-line advertisements for housing are placed by people seeking roommates. (2) The overwhelming majority of problematic ads discriminate on the basis of familial status. There are very few that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, or religion. (3) The few roommate ads that do mention race, ethnicity, or religion are more likely to discriminate in favor of minority groups. Thus, they appear more as expressions of individual diversity of backgrounds and beliefs than exclusionary tools of a majoritarian power structure.This information can and should inform changes to the legislative and enforcement regime for dealing with discriminatory housing advertisements. For example, we should recognize that the roommate relationship is different from traditional rental housing, and accord roommate-seekers protection from the law – protection which is currently given to small landlords (who arguably do not need it) but not co-lessees. Fair housing advocates also must address the unique problems presented by familial status as a protected category, both in terms of public awareness and acceptance of the law.

The issue of whether the prohibitions of the federal Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) extend to practices that produce a discriminatory effect/impact – as well as those prompted by intentional discrimination – is still not fully resolved. While four decades of litigation have produced a strong consensus among the lower courts that the FHA does include an impact standard, the Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue, and defendants continue to contest it. The result is that courts must still deal with this issue, and, to the extent uncertainties remain, the effort to obtain voluntary compliance with the FHA without the need for expensive and time-consuming litigation is undermined.

As the agency primarily responsible for enforcing and interpreting the FHA, the Department of Housing & Urban Development (“HUD”) has a potentially decisive role to play in resolving this issue, because courts accord substantial deference to HUD’s interpretations of the FHA. With respect to the impact issue, HUD has regularly expressed the view in various contexts that the FHA includes such a standard, but the agency has not yet issued a formal regulation on this matter. HUD should do so now, in order to help clarify this issue for courts, litigants, and the public at large.

This Paper seeks to help facilitate this process by providing a detailed analysis of cases and other sources dealing with the impact issue under the FHA. Part I provides some background on this issue. The basic justification for HUD’s adopting an impact regulation is set forth in Part II. Part III discusses the scope and limits of the approach suggested here. Parts IV and V analyze the respective burdens of proofs for plaintiffs and defendants in impact cases under the FHA, thereby describing the particular circumstances that would be appropriate for impact-based claims. Finally, the two appendices provide, respectively, possible language for such a regulation and examples of impact-producing practices that might violate the FHA.

Across the country, from Aberdeen, North Carolina to Modesto, California, city growth has bypassed hundreds of low-income neighborhoods founded under conditions of racial segregation in the early to mid-twentieth century. Denied annexation to neighboring municipalities, these urban pockets remain unincorporated, covered only by county governance and, in some cases, rural service standards. This article represents the first comprehensive academic treatment of such communities, which I call unincorporated urban areas. Challenging popular assumptions regarding an inner-city of racialized poverty in contrast to a white, suburban privatopia, unincorporated urban areas turn our attention to suburbs where the gravitational pull of the urban economy, affordability constraints, and the desire for homeownership have led to the settlement of low-income communities of color at the unregulated fringe, just beyond city limits.

The article analyzes the adequacy of local government structures serving unincorporated urban areas and the flexibility for reform within those structures. It asks, for the first time, whether two tiers of general purpose local government - a city and a county - offer urbanized areas greater participatory voice, stronger protection from undesirable land uses, improved collective services, and greater household mobility than county rule alone. In so doing, it raises the question of what adequacy in the context of local government might mean, revealing unquestioned assumptions about the allocation of power among cities, counties, and states. New legal issues concerning municipal services, extraterritorial eminent domain, and the risk of land loss come into focus in this investigation of cities inside out - urban life placed outside the reach of municipal government.

Today is the 174th anniversary of the fall of The Alamo on March 6, 1836 during the Texas Revolution. As the story goes, the vastly outnumbered Texian forces under siege bought crucial time for the rest of the army by holding out for two weeks until succumbing to the Mexican army under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Cries of "Remember the Alamo" supposedly motivated the Texians at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto.

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of The Alamo to the founding narrative and historical memory of Texas. Though it was once a Catholic mission, it is secular "sacred ground" to many Texans. I know people who proposed to their spouses at the Alamo. Yet the Alamo has also been seen as symbol of racial or ethnocentric overtones to the Texas Revolution. The importance of the Alamo-as-land has played out in several land use controversies over the last two centuries.

An excellent book that reviews the history of both The Alamo and its place in cultural memory is Randy Roberts & James S. Olson, A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (2002). The authors begin with the history of the Alamo itself and the battle, and then spend the remainder of the book talking about what happened to it both as a piece of land and as an icon. Apparently it fell into disrepair (blight?) for decades after Texas independence as the city of San Antonio grew up around it (those who imagine it from the John Wayne movie, way out in the open, are often startled when they finally visit it in busy downtown San Antonio). Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Alamo became increasingly the subject of myth-making. This in turn inspired one of the early historic preservation efforts, through a private organization run by some of the most prominent women in Texas. There was a dispute over whether the preservation should be as a private or a public landmark. The book tells this interesting story plus relates a number of other controversies about the Alamo as a symbol of Anglo-American manifest destiny and as John Wayne's vision of the Alamo as a Cold War story.

The book's title invokes both the "line in the sand" supposedly drawn by Lt. Col. Travis when it became clear the Texians were doomed, and also as a metaphor for the cultural contests over the historical memory of the Alamo as symbol. But the "sand" itself remains a hugely popular tourist site and public space in San Antonio.

From this evening's broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered, one of those stories that makes you say, "Huh?" and them "hmmnn." Seems there's a controversy brewing over how this year's census will count prisoners - as part of the population of the place where they are imprisoned, or their community of origin. You might ask yourself, "How is this a story for the Land Use Prof Blog?" Well, as it turns out, the controversy creates an urban/rural (and a racial) split. The prisoners come from African-American and Latino urban areas, and the places where they are imprisoned are rural and predominantly white. Both areas tend to be poor, and with census numbers come federal dollars to address their most pressing issues - including schools and jobs.

It's always troubling when the neediest folks are pitted against each other for limited resources. We'll see if some happy medium can be found on this issue.

Jamie Baker Roskie

UPDATE: Turns out the funding issue is a bit of a red herring, according to Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative. The real issue is redistricting, and the increase of political influence for districts that have prisons. See his comment to this post, below, which explains the issues more clearly.

This Article examines the emerging phenomenon and implications of sex offender covenants, the latest wave of sex offender legislation, under common law property rules such as touch and concern and the doctrine prohibiting restraints against alienation. The paper theorizes that courts use common law property rules to strike down personal “who” covenants, such as those based on race, age, disability, and often permanently debilitating sex offender status, that run afoul of public policy norms – most particularly, the wide availability of safe and decent housing for all.

The Article analogizes blanket sex offender covenants to their racially restrictive progenitors, arguing that both types of covenants are based on unsubstantiated fears that one population would sexually terrorize another. The modern-day fear is that convicted sex offenders will sexually prey upon children, whereas the underlying fear in the era of racial segregation was that black men, this country’s original sexual predators, would sexually prey upon infantilized white women. Finally, this Article looks to the sordid history of racial segregation for lessons and solutions to the modern-day problem of convicted sex offenders.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary ShaunDonovan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will visit Seattle onThursday, February 4, to address the 9th Annual New Partners for SmartGrowth Conference. They will be joined by Environmental Protection AgencyAssistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus.

Speaking before an audience of more than 1,500 key planners, public healthprofessionals, developers, government staff and elected officialsSecretaries Donovan and LaHood and Assistant Administrator Stanislaus willdiscuss the ways their agencies are working together through the ObamaAdministration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities to improve accessto affordable housing, provide better transportation options, and protectpublic health and the environment.

“EPA, HUD and DOT are working together to rebuild our foundations forprosperity, a process that starts with rethinking the ways our communitiesgrow,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “The interagency Partnershipfor Sustainable Communities is working to give our communities what theyneed to grow and thrive with economic resilience and environmentalsustainability.”

“I am proud to announce HUD’s brand new Office of Sustainable Housing andCommunities today,” said Donovan. “Working with our partners at DOT and EPA,this new office will help us streamline our efforts to create stronger, moresustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering localinnovation and building a clean energy economy.”

“Our Partnership really is a new way of doing business in Washington, tohelp our nation meet 21st century challenges,” said LaHood. “Workingtogether, we’re creating jobs to revitalize our economy, while helping stateand local transportation agencies to build the capacity they need to promotelivable, walkable, sustainable communities.”

The President proposed $527 million in his budget for an ambitious newlivability initiative at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Its Officeof Livable Communities will be a focal point for initiatives such as expanding transit in low-income neighborhoods. It will fund a grantprogram to help state and local transportation agencies provide moretransportation choices that spur economic development.

The New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, taking place Feb. 4-6, is thepremier national smart growth conference, bringing together experts from awide range of disciplines to discuss transportation, housing and urbandevelopment, public health, equitable development, environmental protection,and other topics. The partnership agencies are working together more closelythan ever before to meet the president’s challenge to coordinate federalpolicies, programs, and resources to help urban, suburban, and rural areasbuild more sustainable communities.

The New Partners for Smart Growth Conference is managed by the LocalGovernment Commission, in partnership with EPA, DOT, and other public andprivate sponsors.

More about the Partnership for Sustainable Communities: http:/www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/partnership

More on EPA’s Smart Growth Program: http:www.epa.gov/smartgrowth

More information on HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities: www.hud.gov/sustainability

The new 9,700-square-foot house is split between the living quarters
and a gym, which are connected by a glass-covered walkway. The
ultra-modern design is already annoying residents of this conservative
community, even though it remains unclear when Woods will move in.

Although the house may be unpopular - and apparently Tiger tore down a "classic Bahamas-style mansion" (whatever that is) to build it - Tiger's bigger problem may be the lack of amenities available on the Island if he can't get into the Jupiter Island Club. Apparently there's not much to do on Jupiter Island if you don't belong to the club - no restaurants or stores - and it's hard to have a social life outside the "WASPY" enclave.

Now I find it hard to believe that any country club would fail to admit the world's best golfer, no matter how non-WASPY he is, or how scandalous his current reputation. I think athletic achievement surmounts race, class and moral differences in our culture. However, the fact that these enclaves still exist raises interesting issues in our supposedly post-racial, egalitarian society.

On a side note on identity issues, for a great take on WASPs and their role in our society, I highly recommend Cheerful Money by Tad Friend. I read it at the same time as President Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father. Reading these two books together gives lots of food for thought on how racial identity informs our lives - and often, our settlement patterns. One of Friend's themes is what to do with the shambling family mansion in the exclusive neighborhood that few of the original WASP families can afford to maintain. Obama writes about his days of community organizing in one of the poorest, most polluted sections of Chicago. A stark contrast, to be sure, but each interesting and informative in its own way.

Today our clients the Newtown Florist Club, and the Clinic, got some great coverage in the Gainesville (GA) Times. This article, hopefully the first in a series, covers the impact of industry on the Newtown neighborhood, something I've discussed in a previous blog post and that one of my students also discussed in his guest post. I'm very pleased with this coverage - this reporter, Ashley Fielding, has really gotten at the history and nuance of this complicated situation, which implicates zoning, public health, nuisance, race, class, community and economic development, and much more. Who says newspaper reporting is a dead art?

I've been reading the really excellent new book Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers and Policymakers edited by Roger A. Clay, Jr. and Susan R. Jones. Here's the blurb from the ABA website:

The field of Affordable Housing and Community Economic Development in the United States has evolved substantially since the 1960s. Starting as a social movement to revitalize low income communities, the field has become a solid and complex industry of stakeholders, practitioners, funding intermediaries and supporting professionals --- architects, bankers, financial experts, lawyers, social workers, urban planners and a host of other "community development professionals." Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers and Policymakers documents the themes and trends of the contemporary CED movement and provides guidance for strengthening our communities and ensuring that they and their residents prosper and compete in today's global economy.

This book provides an excellent short history of the CED movement along with some very current perspectives on the current lending crisis and its particular dangers for lower income communities and communities of color. Here's a compelling quote from Chapter 2 "Perspectives on CED in a Global Economy" by john a. powell and Jason Reece:

Given the significance of the credit and foreclosure crisis, we must be diligent to ensure that communities of color are not left out or harmed by the response. Will local strategies to rehabilitate vacant property...produce too much low-income housing, reinforcing concentrated poverty? Will property clearance...result in a 21st-century example of urban renewal, permanently ripping the social fabric of communities of color? Will credit market reforms essentially dry up credit options...while providing no sustainable alternative forms of credit? In light of the crisis, attacks on several targeted policies that benefit communities of color are a chilling preview of what may come...the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) ha[s] already come under attack...These attacks persist, despite clear contradictory evidence. First time homebuyers were clearly not the cause of the credit crisis; more than half of subprime loans were refinance loans, and only 9 percent of subprime loans went to first-time home buyers...Studies have shown that the CRA has been successful at expanding minority homeownership through fair and sustainable loans.

I'm looking forward to reading more about topics like community benefits agreements, the effect of Kelo on CED, and economic development and environmental justice.

My friend Christine McCauley, executive director of Buckhead Heritage, just told me about a very interesting historic preservation case. It seems that a developer wants to move a black graveyard in Buckhead, which is now an very upscale area of Atlanta. The graveyard is there because in the early part of the last century there was a thriving black neighborhood in this area, before the residents were displaced for a park. Now a developer wants to move the graves and a descendant of family members buried there is suing to stop it. Read more here and/or follow events on the BH website. My headline from this post is my favorite quote from the article, from a former mayor of Atlanta.

Tomorrow in the Land Use Clinic seminar we'll be talking about environmental justice. The Clinic got involved in environmental justice issues about two years ago, at the request of our colleagues at the Atlanta public interest law firm GreenLaw. GreenLaw has been involved in environmental justice issues for many years now - environmental justice being defined by the EPA as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, culture, education, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." GreenLaw asked for the Clinic's help in working for environmental justice in the drafting and application of local land use law in Georgia communities.

According to Clifford Rechtschaffen and Eileen Gauna, authors of Environmental Justice: Law, Policy & Regulation, the disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in minority neighborhoods has its origin in land use and zoning practices over the last century. Some of the decisions were based on deliberate racism - e.g., restrictive racial covenants and racially discriminatory zoning. Urban Renewal played a role in displacing thousands of black residents from residential neighborhoods.

Also, according to Yale Rabin, in the early part of the last century many jurisdictions engaged in what he calls "expulsive zoning," by zoning areas predominantly occupied mainly by blacks for industrial or commercial uses, thus displacing the residential uses in these zones. Robert Bullard refers to this strategy as "PIBBY" or "place-in-blacks'-backyards."

Other scholars, including Robin Saha and Paul Mohai, have pointed to economic factors in disproportionate siting and zoning of industrial uses in minority neighorhoods, including low property values in these areas and the reduced likelihood of community opposition (since better educated, more affluent communities are better able to wage opposition campaigns).

Rechtschaffen and Gauna also implicate "structural racism," which encompasses more than explicit racism, classism or political factors:

A broader view of discrimination encompasses actions that are not intentionally racist, but because of the structure or workings of social and political institutions, have discriminatory effects. For example, an all white zoning board may render decisions with discriminatory effects because of unconscious racial prejudices, or because minority citizens, who do not live in the same neighborhoods and are not part of the same social networks as the board members, have less access to them...seemingly technical criteria - such as that a facility should not be sited in proximity to schools, hospitals, or other sensitive institutions - can discriminate against minority residents who because of past and present housing discrimination disproportionately live in areas without such facilities.

Whatever the varied causes, research by John A. Hird and Michael Reese and others demonstrates that, regardless of class or income, pollution is distributed in a way that disproportionately affects people of color (although some subsequent research refutes these findings).

It's a complicated issue. I'll talk about solutions to these problems that we are trying to implement with our clients in subsequent posts.